Arrizane's Story
by Neriad13
Summary: A Native Pandyssian tells of the origins of the Rat Plague and the Marked King who set it loose on the world. A sort of prequel to my upcoming long fic, "The Doom of Pandyssia."


[The first part of this aged document is an extremely dry treatise on the customs of a place called "New Cullero." You flip ahead until you reach a more interesting bit.]

Over the course of my studies, I was pointed towards a young woman named Arrizane. She is a Native Pandyssian of mixed blood and well-versed in the oral traditions of her ancestors, as well as the granddaughter of the unofficial chieftain of this town.

I have been told that she has been serving as a guide through the jungle since childhood and knows much more of Pandyssia than most of her contemporaries. I was honored to secure an interview with her when we made a stop in New Cullero on our tour of the Continent's coastline.

In particular, I asked her of the rumors I'd heard of a ruined city deep in the jungle, called Arouraíos in whispered tones by the grizzled sailors marooned here. The following is the history she related to me, captured as closely to the cadence of the source as possible.

In the Age before Ages, this land was ruled by those who were Marked. We do not know how the Old Gods chose to bestow their gift on one person or the next, but we can trace many lines of succession back to Marked Emperors. As for the transfer of power between Marked Emperors, well, that was a more difficult matter.

There were times when a second Marked surfaced within the ruling family. This was for the best; the transfer of power was peaceful, the ruling class was undisturbed. Sometimes the Emperor's family aged and died off, leaving an empty space that a new Marked might step into with little resistance. If two Marked should come to light at once, the unstated law was that one of them must die before the other might take the throne. This has led to civil war in the past, though it is but a very seldom occurrence.

Ah, but you have asked me of the Forest-King. His position was unique in the annals of my ancestors. I will tell you his tale from the beginning, as my mother's mother told me and her mother to her.

He was a timid orphan, quiet of voice and gentle of step. Perhaps that was why he was Marked to begin with. Was it a private joke of the Old Gods? To Mark a one who has not the fortitude to take his birthright by force?

He was a gardener by trade and that too was his great power. By his hand, desolate places bloomed and wild beauty was scattered to all corners. He hid his Mark all his life and concealed his abilities, for the ruling family was powerful and they had been entrenched on the throne for a hundred years. Who can say how many of the Marked they murdered to keep the reins of power within their hands?

But when his people suffered a drought that would bring death in untold numbers, his kind nature demanded that he hide no longer. By his magic, he coaxed growth from parched ground, brought dead crops back to life and his village thrived as it never had in all its history.

Naturally, this could not be kept secret for long. Leaders of other villages came from miles around to speak to him, to offer gifts, both meager and rich, in return for his favor. In those years, he never ceased travelling, helping all that he could, gifts or no.

As he had feared, he did not go many years without attracting the attention of the entrenched Emperor. A party of priests were dispatched to test the validity of his Mark and among their number, an assassin.

He fled for a time, spending long stretches of months hiding in the deep jungle where none could find him, laying traps that few but those who had power over greenery could ever hope to slip through alive.

By this time, he had gained something of a following. And a one that was steadily growing and demanding that he take his birthright at that. It was decreed by them that his Mark should be examined, but the examination done in a public place surrounded by witnesses. In front of hundreds of watching eyes, his right to rule was declared legitimate and his doomed path set in stone.

At a feast held in honor of the new-born Forest-King's right to rule, the assassin was caught poisoning wine and dragged before the Marked for judgement. He sentenced him to death then and there, by strangulation with jungle vines wrought by his own powers, before a cheering crowd of his bloodthirsty followers.

It was the first murder of many he would commit in his bid to take what was his.

By now the Emperor had a problem on his hands which was not so easy to solve as it once was. The Forest-King could no longer be killed without vast repercussions, so great was his sway over the peasantry of his empire. But he also could not assume the throne without significant pushback from the ruling class, so afraid were they of the possibility of change after so long a line of just emperors from the same family.

All of his advisers gave him the similar advice: you must defeat him fairly, in battle, if you are to prove the legitimacy of your own reign.

He prepared his armies for civil war. In turn, warriors rallied around the Forest-King. Farmers picked up their sickles and joined him in his cause. His forces were much less in number than the Emperor's and more poorly trained, but their spirit might have compensated for all of that, had the Forest-King known anything of military strategy.

After a series of brutal skirmishes at the jungle's edge, the Emperor set fire to the forest that hid his rival's forces and drove them out into the open for slaughter. The back of the rebellion was broken, never to walk again. An example was made of all the rebels who were captured and vocal sympathizers stripped of their property.

In grief at the loss of his precious friends, the Forest-King vanished into the depths of the jungle, a line of those still loyal to him following behind. Together, they took a vow to forsake all civilization until such time as they were strong enough to fight for their king once more.

Years passed. He became nothing more than a legend. The rebels, a horror story to tell to naughty children. His memory, to those old and downtrodden enough to remember, a quiet source of hope in trying times.

The old Emperor died, to be succeeded by his wise and cunning daughter. It was her who received the peculiar messenger from the forest.

She suspected that it must once have been a man. But now… It was a towering, twisted creature of moss and vines, flowering plants blooming from its empty eye sockets. Were it to be jabbed with a spear, the creature would have no reaction, register no pain.

The message it bore was this:

"The Forest-King lives and has grown tenfold in power. Do you deem it right to stand against him?"

She sent her answer back in the hands of a brave emissary. Months later, he returned, his eyes pushed out of his sockets by the roots of the tree growing from his skull.

She prepared for a war the likes of which her people had never seen before.

By this point, you must have guessed that the Forest-King had built his power base in Póli Arouraíou, or Arouraíos, as the slang goes. It was not called that then, of course. Its true name, as well as that of its king, is long lost to the ages, its cursed memory erased from speech and stone.

And so the Empress sent her army to find this City-in-the-Depths, to drive her enemy from the jungle as her father had done years before. They suffered innumerable causalities to many traps, to carnivorous plants set in place to hinder them, to archers hiding in the trees, thinning their ranks with deadly proficiency. Worse than all the rest was the fate of those who were captured. Always, after the passing of a moon, they returned to the battlefield, transformed into monsters of sighing leaves and twisted growth, those with mouths still intact screaming at their former comrades for sweet, freeing death.

But the Empress had trained for this her entire life. Her army would not fall so easily to shock and horror. She took every opportunity to map the layout of the jungle, to twist whatever small mercies she had to her advantage, to learn everything she could of her enemy before daring to engage him.

Her court magicians made for her a powder that would combust with tremendous force when brushed with fire. Once they had significant quantities of this in their grasp, the jungle held little fear for the Empress's Army any longer.

They blazed a path through the undergrowth, leaving a trail of smoking destruction in their wake as they burned their way to the gates of the City-in-the-Depths. And yet, when they reached it…

It was almost too beautiful to destroy.

They had never seen peasants so well-fed, livestock so fat, gardens so lush, stonework so pristine. The Empress' heart hurt as she surveyed it from afar, as her spies carried back knowledge from within the city walls.

But she knew that she could not turn back now.

They tore through the outer wall with the force of a hurricane, slaughtering all who met them in resistance, civilian and warrior alike. The streets ran red with blood and the clash of arms resounded like thunder.

When they were near to breaching the inner wall, where the Forest-King resided in his palace, a disastrous thing happened. The ground opened beneath them, shooting out massive quantities of strangling vines that caught all who stood in their path and dragged them to an early grave. For hours after, the survivors could hear those who were taken crying for help from the tangled abyss.

Without pause, they set to work in preparing explosives that would blast them a path through the Carnivorous Sea.

This was when the second disaster hit.

Rats.

They ran, squealing, through the wall of vines, into buildings, bedrolls, tents, devouring those who were caught in the horde, sickening those who thought they had gotten away with their lives. The Plague devastated both the Empress' Army and the remaining citizens of Póli Arouraíou. At the end of a week, those afflicted would weep blood and be driven, raving, behind locked doors and into underground tunnels, so that they might not spread the Plague farther than it had gone already.

The Empress herself was sickened by the disease and knew her time was running short. With one last push, they made their way through the Carnivorous Sea and unleashed their explosives on a weak spot in the inner wall.

Rats flooded the inner city, skittering over the wreckage left behind by a fleeing people, feasting on everything that wasn't stone, wood or tar. The army killed as many as they could catch, but it was never enough.

Weak and weary, a teardrop of blood forcing its way from the corner of her eye, the Empress ascended the steps of the palace and threw open the doors. The guardians of that place met her with stony silence, their mossy visages unreadable as she and her generals swept through the halls.

They found him in the tomb he had built for himself.

He was weeping.

He was a bent and broken old man, his gnarled claws gripping his cane for dear life. He held a potted plant out to her, begging her to take it, to plant it in rich soil, wherever the shadow of tall trees fall. He said that it was to be her salvation and that of all who would suffer under the Plague he had released upon the land.

We call that plant "King's Mercy" today, for it was the last mercy the gentle Forest-King ever performed.

The plant was taken from his hands and the generals made to arrest him. They were halted by the advances of a violent plant golem, roots flowing from her eye sockets like tears. The Forest-King wept that she was still defending him, for they had been lovers long ago and he had betrayed her.

In the midst of the scuffle, he threw himself between the spear of his golem and the swords of the Empress' men. It is unknown who struck the killing blow.

He was buried in the obsidian coffin that was marked with his name. And then the name was chiseled away.

All of his records were burned to ashes that blew away on the wind. Wherever his likeness appeared, it was desecrated. The city, the parts of it which were not made of stone and still stood, were burned to the ground. Their priests whispered spells of forgetfulness, of eternal eradication.

There would never be another Marked King in Pandyssia. The people had seen too much of their power to have anything but horror and disdain for the idea now.

The Plague that he had released raged, unchecked through the empire, swallowing all that it touched, devouring all the Empress held dear. Chaos broke out in the streets, old orders crumbled, social systems fell to ruin.

The Empress knew that she would live if she took her medicine as the Forest-King had said. But he had given her but a single plant. Were she to tear its leaves from its stem and ingest them, it would die and leave her people no hope of salvation. With her dying breaths, she begged her counselors to propagate it, to give their lives to planting it across the entire continent.

The morning after she had given her orders, she was found lying in bed, an empty vial in her hand and bloody tears on her face.

We do not know the fate of the royal line after this. It was the beginning of the end of the old empire. Rulers came and went in rapid succession, the power base growing smaller with every new incarnation, the people living in terror as they saw the collapse approaching.

Few of us survived to tell the tale and even fewer remember the way to Póli Arouraíou.

We have a legend that the Forest-King's ghost still rules in these jungles, guarding those who would devote themselves to him, giving some portion of his powers to all of his precious children. For despite his heinous crimes, he acted out of love and the heart of that love can still be heard beating in the depths of the jungle.

Here, I noted during the interview, the speaker nervously covered the back of her left hand with the sleeve of her shirt before continuing.

But of course, those are just stories for children. Now, I believe we agreed upon my pay?


End file.
